[Chas Smith]

Kinda bummed that I upgraded to 10 a little over a month ago at about
2X that amount. A bit disappointed at some of the lack of functionality with the capture software…Sony must think tape is dead and so they haven’t made this tool more robust. Guess those of us who plan to work with archived material just have to deal with it.

Oh and yeah…I’ve been a registered Sony Vegas user for years… I’ve yet to get any upgrade nudge e-mail from them too!

[Chas Smith]

From what I gather in your post, I believe you and I agree that there are a significant number of loyal Vegas users who still do a considerable amount of tape format work. (I am getting more involved with non-tape formats but I still do a lot of tapework). Plus certain project workflows make using tape for acquisition a no-brainer (i.e. archive projects, bullet-proof acquisition on OTO events, etc. )

I’m sure there are a lot of users like me who still have amortization / depreciation schedules to keep and our business models require us to squeeze the most we can out of the gear we’ve got. And I have yet to see HDV / MiniDV tape go the way of 3/4″ & S/VHS yet. For Vegas to ignore the capture issue shows a lack of customer awareness / respect. Remember Data Translation / Media 100? The corporate big-whigs basically abandoned the loyal video production users (like me) and shifted their product development towards streaming media…”every desktop a mini-TV station”. And their upgrade pricing path was ludicrous. For Media 100 users who wanted to stay with Mac, it was either FCP or Avid. That’s when I jumped ship to Sony Vegas “Pro” 6. And even though the loyal Media100 users voiced their concern…they were largely ignored. Fast-froward: Data Translation shot itself in the foot over that one and has barely revived.

Like I said (and I’m sure you’ll agree)… anything with a “Professional” designation should deliver everything and not arbitrarily decide on what is best for it’s users. I’m quite taken back at this technical oversight. Maybe it’s time to look closer at other alternatives.. and go back to the future.I hope someone at Sony has this on their radar.or they could become another Media 100.

Thanks for your 2 cents.

[Chas Smith]

Thanks for the response John. My immediate reaction to this is: Wow!
You’d think Sony Vegas Pro would address this important component. Having a glitch in the capture software isn’t very “pro” for what is being touted as a “professional product”. Shouldn’t have to rely on 3rd party fixes for what is supposed to be built in. Very disappointing.

What other buggies are there with Sony Pro? Does anyone have a list?

Seriously…if anyone here has any pull with Sony Vegas Pro folks…they should get them to focus on a fix for this. I’m going to write them after I post this.

Thanks again.

[Chas Smith]

Thanks for the tip , Steve. I did as you explained. Still no luck in opening the Pan/Crop Event function. So I basically clicked the items in my layout and dragged them out one at a time to see if there was anything hidden in the layout.

What I did notice eventually was a tiny…(I mean tiny) window outside of the work area. Not sure if it was there before all this; anyways… this tiny window was among my desktop shortcuts which are few but lined up at the edge of my monitor. I placed my mouse on it and expanded it…sure enough…it was the PAN/CROP EVENT WINDOW!!!

Sonofagun!!! I swear I didn’t see it there before but who knows??? It might’ve been lurking there before I did the SHIFT/CTL on Vegas Open.
Oh well, I’m back to where I was so thanks for your response.

Chaz

[Chas Smith]

Thanks William:

Apparently I opened Vegas with an older project/edit file which had DV settings in the preferences. This is the only way I can explain it as everything is working with a new project file with the correct prefs.

Thanks again!

[Chas Smith]

Thanks John: Apparently the settings were switched although it escapes me how that happened. I must’ve loaded a different project file from a DV capture preference since my camera settings were unchanged.

Thanks again!

[Chas Smith]

Actually found what I was looking for although this doesn’t feature eSata I believe:

https://www.drobo.com

Anyone familiar with this enclosure?

Thanks!

[Chas Smith]

I’ve had good results with WMV rendering to 1280X720 HD @ Best setting.

[Chas Smith]

Thanks Spot: I already saw the useful tool in properties. Thing is that I would really be interested in something that has templates already made up to use motion-video in one section while displaying related content in the other (dynamic text, logos, banners). The real-time content (i.e. news crawls, weather, etc.) would probably come from the IT guys in the facility. I was wondering if there were “stand-alone” digital signage design/compositing programs (other than Adobe CSS or Flash) that are cost-effective and user-friendly. As for SCALA …I have to say that doing simple things like changed text attributes aren’t very straight-forward. And doing a number of searches online have users expressing their frustrations as much about that as other things.

I guess I could do the comps in Vegas but again… I was hoping for something a bit more off-the-shelf for the specific purpose.

Thanks to all who’ve replied.

[Chas Smith]

Thanks for all the postings/replies. Did some adjusting and will stay put for now. But am seriously looking at the suggested options and other resources. Just hate to not have some coverage.

Thanks again!